There has heretofore been known a so-called shift-by-wire type shift control device including (a) shift-intention detecting means for electrically detecting a driver's shift-intention; (b) a shift mechanism, moveable by shift drive means that is electrically controlled in response to the driver's shift-intention, to be displaced to a plurality of shift positions; (c) positional information detecting means for detecting positional information on the mechanical displacement of the shift mechanism; and (d) shift position determining means for determining the shift positions based on resulting positional information. One example of a vehicular shift control device is disclosed in Patent Publication 1. With such a structure, restricting means is provided for mechanically restricting a movable end (such as, for instance, a parking position) of the shift drive means. Leaning the movable end as a reference position allows the shift positions to be determined based on relative positional information (such as a pulse number, etc., of an encoder), even on detecting relative positional information with the use of the positional information detecting means. Further, Patent Publication 2 proposes a technology of detecting an absolute positional information of mechanical displacement of a shift mechanism in a noncontact manner by a hall element etc., so that the shift positions are determined based on the absolute positional information in accordance with a correlation preliminarily determined in terms of the absolute positional information (such an output voltage, etc., of a hall element) and the plurality of shift positions.                [Patent Publication 1] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-308847        [Patent Publication 2] Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2004-108382        
The structure in the former Publication is arranged to allow a parking position (P range) to be learnt as an abutting engagement position, and the abutting engagement positions are different depending on whether or not a parking lock is effectuated. This causes an issue in which no high precision is necessarily obtained on determining the shift positions. In contrast, with the structure of latter Publication, the shift positions determined in response to absolute positional information can be accurately determined regardless of the presence or absence of the parking lock. However, absolute positional information, such as the output voltage of the hall element, is varied in response to for instance variations in a disturbance magnetic field or an environmental temperature, deterioration with time or the like, making accurate determining of the shift positions difficult. An attempt to control the shift mechanism based on for instance the resulting shift positions may deviate the shift positions from correct positions.